Lurid & Cute (33 page)

— What you going to do? said Hiro.

I considered this and found no easy answer.

— You think we should stop and talk? I said.

— Perhaps, said Hiro.

That was how he was. Always he was open with many people and I think that's cool, to be so open to new experiences.

– It seems to be their intention, said Hiro.

He had been taking a cocktail of small pills while we were on our car chase, and now he took some more, presumably for the hours ahead, complete with a bottle of water. There was something very homely in this gesture, I considered. It was very domestic and very homely, in some indefinably consoling way.

which ends in a forest, or common ground

The forest outside our suburb was one where I had once roamed with my father when I was young, looking for dead leaves to take home and use as mulch or fertiliser or other garden terms. The ghost of my father was everywhere, even though he was not dead but then that's not impossible, that a person who is alive is also something that haunts you. As usual, I suppose, I was wanting to live up to my responsibilities – for after all, what's growing up, in the joke of the old master? It's to be allowed to crack that whip, your will, over you with your own hand, which was something I was doing as I parked to the side of the road. The other car mimicked me, if perhaps with more precision of manoeuvre. And I guess my plan in coming to a halt had been to begin a benign conversation, something in which we would simply come to conclusions about mistakes and misunderstandings made, then slap each other on the back and go our separate ways, but the problem was that no one wanted to talk, or certainly not talk in that way. I don't know how unusual that may seem. I've always thrived in atmospheres where people are quiet and respectful. Instead they preferred to shout which always I have found completely distressing, and it meant that I was scared and seemed to feel myself consenting, as if I were no longer concerned about the precise reasons or motivations but only the issue of my safety. I was surprised to see that all three of these pursuers, now that they had stepped out of the car, were women, but that was not so much interesting as the terror of their equipment: ski masks, wipe-clean leather, that kind of terrific accoutrement. I determined not to be scared, or at least not to show I was scared, because if you show you are scared then you're finished, and I did not want to be finished, not just yet. To Hiro I gave a confident smile and I could see by the way his face moved that this somewhat reassured him. He was communicating to me something like:
You want us to sort this out? We
will
sort this out, and it will be a very easy thing. Just as easy as the way I took those pills back then, just as fast and slick as that. Don't be scared, amigo!
You could tell he was saying such things just by the way he was feeling in his pocket for a cigarette and lighting it with untrembling hands. It was kind of him, because I would say that I was currently feeling scared, not just of the people in front of us but also in particular the setting. It was difficult to tell where one fear ended. They seemed to swarm together. For I had only to think of how I really was unsure as to who these people might be, and what wrong I might have done – since after all there was a wide selection to choose from in my past and recent past, like the problem in the old game shows of choosing the most desirable reward from the goods arrayed on display, like some portrait of the trophies of the hunt – that I necessarily also became confused and worried in my thinking, a worry that was difficult to distinguish from a worry or presentiment that all around us now in this forest were insects and also animals, possibly aliens as well, as I had once believed when I was younger. There was a rustling that was like the way you might imagine language rustling, if it were a thing, which I suppose it is, or also danger, in so far as danger is also remote, miniature, desolate, and very close. And so as usual I tried to be the one to speak first, because in the end this is how you control a situation, so in my head I prepared very carefully the right things to say, such as how sorry I was, and also how I would like to know exactly why it was they felt this need to direct us into the dark of a roadside woodland or forest, even if I suppose in this I was wrong, since I was the one who had chosen this location, and yet in some way I was very convinced that things were happening without my being able to control them at all. But one of the women was quicker than I was.

— What do you want? she said. — What did you think would happen?

— I don't know, I said.

I wanted to ask if also she had been the one responsible for destroying the objects in my house, and also for the unusual messages to my phone, but at the same time I was feeling how suddenly I did not know how to be in such a conversation, I mean one in which all the responses were unpredictable. It was obvious that they were talking to us in code, like the ghosts talk to their mystic Dictaphone at the Ouija board in tongues, and as with every mystic the whole problem is decoding the mystery in time.

— There's been a mistake, I said. — We mean no harm.

For if she intended to intimidate me very quickly I wanted to point out that whether or not I had grown up in the same kind of circumstances as she had, I was still my own person and had a certain courage.

where a conversation takes place

But instead I found that I was burdened with a heavy silence, with no more words left inside me at all, which often happens when people shout at me, it silences me completely. Like for instance there was this one time when I was in my infancy, when I thought that I had locked myself into a room, that I could not open the door, as if it were too high above me, which I did find very perplexing. And when I called, eventually my father came, and opened the door with ease, because it was in fact not locked at all – but instead of reacting with tenderness and care he only seemed angry, and shouted at me, while I stood there, my trousers round my ankles, and I felt a total silence and injustice, which always happens to me whenever I am berated. I cannot avoid it. And so I was grateful when I understood that Hiro was now doing the talking for us, even if also I felt a regret, since I had always promised myself that I would be the one to protect him, and yet at the highest test it had turned out I had failed. But then perhaps that's not so strange, that in extraordinary situations the familiar structures might impossibly mutate. I felt this tenderness for Hiro that was a terrible sensation, given the invisible weight of such a feeling and how little prepared I was to bear such a weight myself. It had never occurred to me how good-looking Hiro was, with his unlined skin, his natural quiff. I was half in love with him. He was talking quickly and at some length, and while I knew that many of the reasons for this were only chemical, and that if you got to know Hiro you would understand that he meant no harm, he simply did not mean any harm at all, but still, the problem with life is that so many times we are making assumptions based on very limited information, and I could see that these people here were precisely doing such a thing, they were judging Hiro and finding him difficult on the basis of an interpretation that was certainly at least a little unjustified. When Hiro informed these individuals that he saw no reason to be scared of them, that in fact they did not scare him, that they should probably pack up their masks right now and disappear into the sunset, there was no need to see in what Hiro said anything arrogant or untoward. Not of course that I did not realise that to others he could seem just unpredictable. To me he was only vulnerable whereas I suppose it seemed to them that a certain cool bravado was the real machine for his actions.

— So maybe, said one of the women, — you should just stop talking, yeah?

To think that in this country there can be death squads and other torture organs! Not that in a way I disagree, since I can understand very well, from this long distance, the desire to put me on trial, but still – we had got so used to the idea that we would never have to face up precisely to what we had done. It seemed so beautiful, that kind of life. I never thought I would have to meet my enemies. And if this word
enemy
seems to you old-fashioned, if you are puffing out your cheeks or laughing like a putto, taking another bite of samosa and in triumph at my stupidity, I do think that's unfair. The old words can maybe be useful. For here were people demanding that Hiro should stop talking, and one thing which is always true of Hiro in these moods is that he does not like to stop talking, especially when asked. Such misunderstandings perhaps happen all the time. To Hiro, he really was a person with so many intricate thoughts and opinions and tastes, he really did think that his love of green-tea ice cream was something that made him very rare, whereas to these people I understood that if they were seeing a human at all it was the most abstract version of a human, a person who simply does not understand what they are about, who is a problem for them and quite possibly needs to be eliminated – and to explain the one to the other would be almost superhumanly impossible. But well, not everything can be explained. Some things are spidery and private. There's always this giant mismatch between the large interior and the small outside, and in fact sometimes I think the distance between the two is so gigantic that there's no possible way of relating the one to the other. They are the pure incommensurate.

which becomes more violent

But at the same time, it turns out to be very easy to make someone very small, just as large as the largeness of their body and no more, as demonstrated by one of our adversaries, who stepped forward and placed a holdall on the ground. Then very gently, and I was impressed by the way she did this, how smoothly and how at ease, she then removed from this holdall a gun. She looked at us and it was the kind of look that says
adios, compadre
, in the very fact that the look is so blank it says nothing at all. The problem was that I saw no way of understanding what would be the way to take myself out of such a situation. I did not know what was wanted, whether money or attention or apology or promise to flee the country. I wanted to plead and offer anything at all. To think how angry she was! How angry someone must be with you to bring out a genuine gun – and that it was genuine I had no doubt, it was just something in the way that she was holding it, and I realised that this was a very useful knowledge for the future, if I had a future, and if that future involved me being confronted with a gun, which I hoped would not be true. Everything inside me was scrambled and in despair. No wonder I was admiring of Hiro's courage! I knew that in some way there was a relation between his sprightliness and the pills that he had taken, but still, I don't think it's possible to reduce anything to anything: all behaviours in the end are a total mystery.

— We should totally calm down, said Hiro. — We should absolutely sit down and talk about this, maybe over coffee. Wouldn't that be a better plan? I'm not meaning to impose, I'm just –

He gradually stopped speaking and I understood, because it's difficult to maintain your poise in the absence of an understanding audience. To try to diminish such disquiet I tried to look around me at the natural beauty. It had rained so continuously that violent flora and fauna had emerged: new beetles, and savage kinds of kale. The last sunlight was making soft columns among the trees. I think I have no interest in natural beauty, or at least I didn't then. My interest very strongly was in something my mother had once said to me, which was that I deserved everything that happened to me. She meant that I deserved all the good things and the prodigies, but I was wondering if also I did deserve this too, as punishment for all my million misdeeds. And if so me, then maybe Hiro deserved such violence as well. And yet what kind of violence, I did not know. A small animal was staring at me from a tree and a vast terror overtook me. I really did not want to die, out here, in terrible pain. I am used to telling my innermost feelings to people and having them respected, and so I did this now. For I really was not ready for death, to go down into the underworld, into the hall of two truths and weigh my life against a single feather. I know you are meant to be ready for death at any moment, but what does this really mean? Certainly I am not ready for death – with so many secrets to be discovered in my email, so many projects left unfinished and indecipherable in my notebooks. I had no wish to become a body, with around it crouched my nervous first responders.

— I'm afraid of you, I cried. — I'm really afraid.

For if you say such a thing, surely this is a signal that you mean no violence to anyone and deserve to be pitied? And also I did want to emphasise that even if they were murderous and like a firebrand from the ancient myths, I did not judge them, since I think it's a basic principle that if you are inside a situation where you may have been to blame, you cannot blame the people you might have hurt if they want to take matters into their own hands, however objectively bad they may be.

— You see? said Hiro, in a gesture of amenable supplication.

And then they shot Hiro very gently. It was a brief moment but also irrevocable, about as small and irrevocable as the moment whenever the instrument known always as the bonjo acquired the new name of the banjo, and all previous musical history came softly and precisely into focus.

& placing our hero outside all his usual categories

Everything was creaturely and disintegrating and wet around me, like suddenly I was part of the natural world and that's always a disturbing feeling. It was no longer just a history of some uptown hustle. Presumably thousands of miles away in a brown swamp somewhere on the outskirts of town a green crocodile was submerging its one good eye, and me I was crying very much without being able to stop it. Had you ever talked to me about gun violence, I think I would have said that the true guns would have been terrible items, complete with dazzling sounds. I expected flame and burning maw, but instead it was much softer. The gun flinched but her arm didn't. Then after a very small pause, certain reds were slowly everywhere on Hiro's sleeve and I did not know where to look or how to feel, except my feelings very strongly were occurring without my knowledge. I say knowledge but I mean control. I think they had shot Hiro in his outstretched arm but it was difficult to know. I was screaming many things inside my head but outside I was silent. Or possibly I managed something very small and meek, but righteous, like: